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Comment by Sohcahtoa82 | Hacker News Reader

Yup.

I'm not really afraid of getting old, but I'm afraid of becoming decrepit.

My grandma has been decrepit for over 5 years now. She can't walk and has no bladder or bowel control, so she just sits on the couch and shits herself all day. She's not living, she's merely surviving. She was living with my mom for a while, but my mom decided she couldn't handle it anymore and put her in an assisted living facility.

If I get to the point where I couldn't cook my own meals and wipe my own ass, just put a bullet in me. I do not fear dying, but I do fear spending years of my life not being able to actually do anything.

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My dad died at the end of last year, and was not too different from your grandma. For him the main problem was chronic pain from his failing body. Even fairly powerful opioids from a pain management doctor only helped a bit. Basically all he could do was sleep, eat meals, and sit in his chair in pain.

I feel similar to you, but I wonder if it's one of those those things where age changes your perspective. Dad was in assisted living and had several stints in rehab/nursing home facilities, and in both there were quite a few people with what I'd call poor quality of life who were still holding on to life.

Something we youngsters (I'm 69) may not realize is that people in assisted living still have friends and frequently even sex lives while they are there. They read, play games, and watch movies, just like us. They might not be able to do all the things they could when they were younger, but their lives are not necessarily over.

I am looking forward to playing 3 decades of great computer games once I am too old to go out into the woods or do martial arts.

I love gaming, but I am still too young to do it properly.

Any idea what kind of games you'll want to play by then?

I suspect it won't be hair-trigger combat games in dark dungeons where every strike results in a blizzard of gems and stars flying around the screen while teenagers scream into the mic.

But if you like Sudoku and crosswords you'll probably be good. That's my jam anyway.

I've been playing Factorio and the base game is 100 hours easily, there are mods that ratchet it up to 500+. It's great brain exercise too, constantly refactoring, solving for bottlenecks, etc.

I would love to be that mentally spry in my old age. I'm not convinced I will be though.

Witcher, all of them Baldurs gate 3 Mass effect Assassins creed

Probably gta 6, if it’s out by then

Hopefully by then VR versions of The Longest Journey or sanctioned or unsanctioned AI generated/slop adaptations of trek/wars/who etc.

This. I've bought a lot of games over the last 15 years that I haven't touched let alone finished. I hope to at least play them some day.

Of course, some truly do “live” there, and good for them.

And others just sit there waiting to die, unable to even feed themselves.

I saw plenty of examples of both when my grandmothers were in assisted living homes. Unfortunately my grandmothers both tended towards the latter case.

nice

> there were quite a few people with what I'd call poor quality of life who were still holding on to life.

The next question would be “did they have any alternative”

I am close to what you describe about your dad, and I am 42. I have no idea what to do. I don't want to live this way. And I don't want to die, not really, although I am at peace with the idea. I can't find what is wrong with me, except for the fact that it is related to pain regulation mechanisms somehow. This has been going on for 10 years already.

The only thing that helps now are opioids in dosages nobody would prescribe. I was prescribed opioids at some point during these years, and I still don't know if this was a mistake by the doctor. Now I am in pain AND opioid-dependent. But I am not sure I would not have ended my life sooner if not for the temporary relief I had.

The government does not allow me to get a few years of better quality life in return for dying early from an overdose, etc. I am bitter about it, and often wish government officials had the pain I do. Maybe I did not do enough, or people close to me could have been more pressing in asking to do more earlier. That's a consequence of a culture where people don't get into other people's business. I sometimes hope it is not too late still, but everything is harder now, and I still don't have any good ideas or the willpower to execute them.

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